Pokemon GO - Day 15 - Plus: The Lucky Egg Trick

Two weeks into Pokemon GO, I have a Level 19 character (red team) with 61 unique Pokemon. There was a fairly big update a week ago that fixed the broken maps, changed a few menu locations, added the ability to re-edit your character, and some cosmetic and performance improvements. I also heard that Pokemon locations were reshuffled, at least in Japan. But along with those good things are a few new bugs, one of which sometimes makes the screen unresponsive after having the app in battery saver mode. I also noticed that I don't find Pokemon as often as I used to... though that might have to do with the Pokemon location reshuffling, or the level my character is in.

I've started getting heavily into battles, mainly to get PokeCoins. The nearest Gym in my neighborhood is a church about 200 meters away, and I go there everyday after work. It's heavily contested and constantly changing hands between the red and blue teams (and occasionally, the yellow team - there don't seem to be many people in that team). Usually, after taking over a Gym and placing my 1599 CP Lapras in it for defense, someone will, in less than an hour or so, have defeated it. That's fine though. All I'm interested in is getting the coins.

(Sorry, my pictures will be in Japanese - was too lazy to switch my phone to English!)

It's kind of interesting when I see people there in front of the church late at night. I usually get home at around 11 pm, but now and then I see someone in front of the Gym, usually in business attire like I am, furiously tapping away at his screen. We don't look at each other or say anything. I just focus on taking over the Gym, putting my Lapras in it, and grabbing the coins. When the job's done, I head on home.

.....

So anyway, I'm going to be describing this trick I learned on how to boost your level. I was actually planning to list down all the most useful tips I know, but because this one is quite long, I decided to just save the others for another post.

The Lucky Egg Trick

Like in most games, leveling up is very important. When you level up, you get access to new items (like better PokeBalls), rarer Pokemon, and Pokemon with better stats. Using this trick will help you level up very quickly.

First of all, you'll need a Lucky Egg. When activated, Lucky Eggs allow you to get double the XP you acquire within a 30 minute time limit. When you first start playing Pokemon, I think you get 2 or 3 Lucky Eggs. You can also get extra Lucky Eggs when you get to certain levels. They're also available in the in-game store, but you're going to need to pay with real money for those.

The whole point of this trick is to take advantage of the double XP period you get with the Lucky Egg by evolving Pokemon, because performing an evolution is the fastest way to get you the most amount of XP. All you have to do is select one of your Pokemon and hit "Evolve". Under normal conditions, one evolution gives you 500 XP. With a Lucky Egg, your XP acquisition is bumped up to 1000 XP.

Now, evolving requires that you have enough "candy". Three candies are received when you capture a Pokemon, and one candy can be acquired whenever you send an unneeded Pokemon to Professor Willow via the "Transfer" option. Another important thing to know is that the candies you acquire are unique to a particular Pokemon. For example, the candy you receive from capturing Bulbasaur cannot be used to evolve Charmander. In fact, the candy you get from capturing Bulbasaur is called "Bulbasaur Candy". So, in order to evolve Bulbasaur, you'll need to capture MORE Bulbasaur, and/or transfer some of them to the Professor.

Confused already? Yeah, I was too. Don't worry, when you start playing you'll get what I mean.

Anyway, take a look at my Eevee. Under its picture, you see that I have 51 Eevee Candy. Then, below that, it says that the Evolve requirement is 25 Eevee Candy. That means I can evolve two Eeveies (assuming I had 2 of them, or course). If I had 3 Eeveies and I wanted to evolve all of them, I'd need 75 Eevee candy.

The "cheapest" evolutions are for Pidgey, Weedle, and Caterpie. Each of them require only 12 candies. Also, at least for Pidgey and Weedle, they are extremely easy to find and are literally everywhere (or at least, they used to be! I don't find them as often as I did before). According to people I know, Caterpie is also supposedly easy to find, though my experience has been different.

Another good Pokemon for evolutions is Rattata. Although its evolution costs 25 candies, you'll find tons of Rattata wherever you go. Or at least that's the case if you're in Tokyo.
[post_ad]Okay, so here's what you have to do. You'll need to find as many Pidgey, Weedle, Caterpie, and Rattata as you can. How many is many? Well, I'd probably aim for about 50 in total. And remember, just collecting 50 of them isn't enough because you're going to need candies to evolve them. What that means is, you'll probably be collecting about roughly 150 plus Pidgey, Weedle, Caterpie, and Rattata, and transferring most of them to Professor Willow before you'd be ready to activate the Lucky Egg. (That's 150 in total, not for each Pokemon type)

Once you've gotten about 50 of those Pokemon with enough candies to evolve them all, select your Lucky Egg, activate it, and start the evolutions! You'll end up with about 50,000 XP, which could boost you to up to 2 to 3 levels in just half an hour!

If you want to make the most out of your Lucky Egg, there's a good web app you can use called the Pidgey Calculator. You put in how many of each Pokemon you have, the number of candies, and it will tell you how long it will take to evolve all of them, and how many more Pokemon you should capture to take full advantage of the Lucky Egg.

(That link above will bring you to the new Pidgey Calculator. Personally, I still prefer to use the old one, here.)

So that's it for now! I hope that might be useful to you guys once Pokemon GO finally comes out in the Philippines.